"TOUGHEST COWBOY"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21462, 8 April 1933, Page 3 (Supplement)

"TOUGHEST COWBOY"

I ENGLISHMAN'S DISTINCTION RISE TO FAME IN TEXAS I After a short visit to the land of his birth, a young Englishman recently left London to go back to Texas. He is Johnnie Regan, a lithe, lanky, laconic Wild Westerner. And he has a West End accent. He is known as the toughest man in Texas. Yet if you were a cowboy and did not know Johnnie you would call him a tenderfoot, or a " dude." Johnnie Regan was born in Windsor Barracks, son of a guardsman. One day a circus came to Windsor, and young Johnnie abandoned his soldiering ambition and ran away with the

circus. This was the life for him. Johnnie's chance came one day, and he was soon a star stage and circus cowboy. Then the amateur cowboy rode off to Texas, to the wild ranges and the home of the real rope-throwing, hardriding cow-puncher. That gave the Texas boys a bit of a shock. Here was an Englishman being a cowboy, and beating old hands at the game. Amid roars of glee Johnnie Regan, ex-circus rider, was christened "King George's Private Cowboy.'' In Texas, Regan, the dude, became so famous that they introduced him to Will Rogers, who said that if this sort of thing continued the United States Government would have to put a tariff on English cowboys. But Johnnie did his share of the leg-pulling. One day he dug out from his luggage an opera hat and an umbrella, and gorgeously arrayed in these ho rode out for the day's work. That crowned the popularity of Johnnie Regan, the English cowboy. Soon after he appeared at Wembley in the rodeo. The top hat and umbrella formed the basis of Regan's stage make-up during a recent season at the Windmill Theatre, London.